City of Strangers

City of Strangers
Author: Andrew Gardner
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2010
Genre: Bahrain
ISBN: 9780801476020

In City of Strangers, Andrew M. Gardner explores the everyday experiences of workers from India who have migrated to the Bahrain and the sponsorship system, the kafala, under which they labor and upon which they depend for continued employment.

India Migration Report 2016

India Migration Report 2016
Author: S. Irudaya Rajan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2016-10-04
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1315443392

India Migration Report 2016 discusses migration to the Persian Gulf region. This volume: looks at contemporary labour recruitment and policy, both in India and in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries; explores gender issues in migration to Gulf countries; and brings together the latest field data on migrants across states in India. Part of the prestigious annual series, this volume will interest scholars and researchers of economics, development studies, migration and diaspora studies, labour studies, and sociology. It will also be useful to policymakers and government institutions working in the area.

South Asian Migration in the Gulf

South Asian Migration in the Gulf
Author: Mehdi Chowdhury
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 228
Release: 2018-04-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3319718215

This volume explores the reasons behind, and impact of, the migration of South Asian nationals (from India, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bhutan and Maldives, Afghanistan and Myanmar) in the Gulf countries (Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE and Bahrain). The authors provide a broad overview of the demographics of the phenomenon, its mechanisms, and focus on the contribution of migrants in various sectors including construction, health and education, and the overall labour market in the Gulf. The book also taps into the regional geo-politics and its links to the South Asian Migration in the Gulf. This book is recommended reading to all those interested in international migration and labour issues.

Impossible Citizens

Impossible Citizens
Author: Neha Vora
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 259
Release: 2013-03-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0822353938

Indian communities have existed in the Gulf emirate of Dubai for more than a century. Since the 1970s, workers from South Asia have flooded into the emirate, enabling Dubai's huge construction boom. They now compose its largest noncitizen population. Though many migrant families are middle-class and second-, third-, or even fourth-generation residents, Indians cannot become legal citizens of the United Arab Emirates. Instead, they are all classified as temporary guest workers. In Impossible Citizens, Neha Vora draws on her ethnographic research in Dubai's Indian-dominated downtown to explore how Indians live suspended in a state of permanent temporariness. While their legal status defines them as perpetual outsiders, Indians are integral to the Emirati nation-state and its economy. At the same time, Indians—even those who have established thriving diasporic neighborhoods in the emirate—disavow any interest in formally belonging to Dubai and instead consider India their home. Vora shows how these multiple and conflicting logics of citizenship and belonging contribute to new understandings of contemporary citizenship, migration, and national identity, ones that differ from liberal democratic models and that highlight how Indians, rather than Emiratis, are the quintessential—yet impossible—citizens of Dubai.

Between Dreams and Ghosts

Between Dreams and Ghosts
Author: Andrea Wright
Publisher: Stanford Studies in Middle Eas
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2021
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781503630109

More than one million Indians travel annually to work in oil projects in the Gulf, one of the few international destinations where men without formal education can find lucrative employment. Between Dreams and Ghosts follows their migration, taking readers to sites in India, the United Arab Emirates, and Kuwait, from villages to oilfields and back again. Engaging all parties involved--the migrants themselves, the recruiting agencies that place them, the government bureaucrats that regulate their emigration, and the corporations that hire them--Andrea Wright examines labor migration as a social process as it reshapes global capitalism. With this book, Wright demonstrates how migration is deeply informed both by workers' dreams for the future and the ghosts of history, including the enduring legacies of colonial capitalism. As workers navigate bureaucratic hurdles to migration and working conditions in the Gulf, they in turn influence and inform state policies and corporate practices. Placing migrants at the center of global capital rather than its periphery, Wright shows how migrants are not passive bodies at the mercy of abstract forces--and reveals through their experiences a new understanding of contemporary resource extraction, governance, and global labor.

South Asian Migration to Gulf Countries

South Asian Migration to Gulf Countries
Author: Prakash C. Jain
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2017-09-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317408861

South Asians constitute the largest expatriate population in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. Their contribution in the socio-economic, technological and educational development of GCC nations is immense. This book offers one of the first systematic analysis of South Asia–Gulf migration dynamics and its varied impact on countries such as India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It deals with public policy, socio-economic mobility, remittance policy, global financial crisis and labour issues. Bringing together essays from contributors from around the world, the volume reveals not only the multi-dimensionality of the migration process between the two regions, but also the diversity and the underlying unity of the South Asian countries. This book will be invaluable to scholars and students of migration studies, development studies and sociology as well as policy-makers, administrators, academics, and non-governmental organisations in the field.

Undocumented

Undocumented
Author: Rejimon Kuttappan
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9354922538

Our complicated and fragile global economy relies on the unacknowledged labour of a subterranean network of undocumented migrant workers. Despite them providing vital support to host economies, governments continue to turn a blind eye to these migrants' woes without any consequences. In the absence of documents to speak for them, their human rights are systematically abused, their voices ignored, their existence refuted. The women, as is often the case, suffer under the dual attacks of patriarchy and anonymity. Exigencies of bureaucracy ensure that the children are often unregistered and even lack passports. The result is a truly exploited populace without much relief in sight. They survive on sheer courage and perseverance, shedding blood, sweat and tears that end up fuelling the thumping home and host economies. In Undocumented, journalist and migrant-rights researcher Rejimon Kuttappan brings to light the lives of these oft-ignored migrants through stories of six Indians in the Arab Gulf, and through them, voices the plight of millions more. Delving into histories both personal and national to establish where we are and how we got here, the author lays bare the lives of people betrayed by their own into human trafficking, into poverty, and into exile in a land that only glimmers with promise.

Building Migrant Cities in the Gulf

Building Migrant Cities in the Gulf
Author: Florian Wiedmann
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 231
Release: 2019-07-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1788316266

Human history has seen many settlements transformed or built entirely by expatriate work forces and foreigners arriving from various places. Recent migration patterns in the Gulf have led to emerging 'airport societies' on unprecedented scales. Most guest workers, both labourers and mid to high-income groups, perceive their stay as a temporary opportunity to earn suitable income or gain experience. This timely book analyses the essential characteristics of this unique urban phenomenon substantiated by concrete examples and empirical research. Both authors have lived and worked in the Gulf including Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates during various periods between 2006 and 2014. They explore Gulf cities from macro and interconnected perspectives rather than focusing solely on singular aspects within the built environment. As academic architects specialised in urbanism and the complex dynamics between people and places the authors build new bridges for understanding demographic and social changes impacting urban transformations in the Gulf.

India's Low-Skilled Migration to the Middle East

India's Low-Skilled Migration to the Middle East
Author: S. Irudaya Rajan
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 378
Release: 2019-10-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9811392242

This book provides new insights and research studies on how developing countries come to terms with the nationalisation policies of Gulf economies that provide employment for their nationals. Focusing on regions and countries that have traditionally been overlooked, it includes studies on labour migration from Egypt to the Middle East and from the Philippines to Lebanon, migrant experiences and policy prospects in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon, and Indian migration to the Gulf. The book fills a critical gap in migration research by studying migration from various Indian states, such as Tamil Nadu, Telugu-speaking states (Telangana and Andhra Pradesh), Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. It also explores the unexpected phenomenon of demographic windows of economic opportunity (not documented in demographic literature) observed in a few Arab countries due to older migrant expatriates returning to their home country; the impact of international out-migration on intergenerational educational mobility among children in migrant-sending households in Kerala; and forced migration of Kerala Muslims to the Gulf.